Interactive television (ITV) combines conventional television with additional content, referred to as ITV content, to present a viewer with an enhanced version of an audiovisual program, such as a broadcast television program, commercial, or VOD content. As used herein, the term ITV content refers to any additional information or application that is invoked to create one of the aforementioned enhanced television experiences.
In order to generate an enhanced television experience, information on how the enhanced content is to be displayed, as well as how the enhanced content is to behave in response to user actions or other external events, are provided to an executing client. Generally speaking, the presentation and behavior information should be as rich and descriptive as possible to provide a viewer with a superior enhanced television experience. However, due to limited bandwidth and platform resources of the receiving client, the presentation information should also be small and efficient.
Accordingly, what is desired is a system and method for an optimized interactive application definition language that describes ITV presentation and behavior information in a manner that relieves the tension between these two competing requirements for generating an ITV experience.